CAE Weblog

Asking customers for what you don't already know

Danny, a colleague at Ironworks, shared an interesting article by Mark Hurst about assessing customer needs.  Mark's friend owns an organic fruit company and wanted to update his web site.  He obviously needed to start with better understanding his customers' needs and how they wanted to use his site.

When we conduct focus groups or usability testing to do this, we often start with specific scenarios to test based on what we predict customers will want to do or what we want them to do.  However, Mark and his friend were concerned that they would only test known problems and would not uncover unexpected challenges that users may experience.

They decided to replace standard usability testing with "listening labs" in order to generate a more iterative or "organic" experience.  This less-structured approach (which could also be applied to focus groups or usabiltity testing) helped them discover some new issues and potential solutions that would not likely have been identified during the standard test scenarios.

I would like to experiment with this approach with some of our future user research and will let you know how it goes.

Tagged: Mark Hurst usability testing listening labs focus groups
   

Search for the Next Great Fundraising Event

Anthony Williams' keynote at the Association Technology Conference inspired me to order the book, Wikinomics, that he co-authored with Don Tapscott.  It is a fascinating book that provides insight into the potential power of mass collaboration and how it is already changing our world and its business models significantly.

So I started to think how this mass collaboration concept might apply to charitable organizations.  So many of these charities seem to be in a rut when it comes to fundraising events.  Most are realizing only modest if any real growth.  How many walks can one community actually support?  We have walked, run, skiied, golfed, sailed, bicycled, etc. all over the world.  Where will the next new fundraising event appear?

If pharmaceutical companies can collaborate on R&D to find the next great drug, why can't like-minded charities collaborate to invent the next great fundraising event?  Personally, I would love to see several environmental groups come up with an event or activity to raise millions to save our planet.  Or, perhaps several health organizations can work together to raise the dollars to find a cure.

How would this work?  It could start with an open community discussion to learn what motivates people to raise money and participate in these events.  What are the essential elements for a successful fundraising event?  Then, this "open source" community of fund raising professionals and past event participants could work on identifying a brand new concept (or a significant twist on an old one).  The goal would be to create an event or activity that would capture the imaginiation of a mass audience and inspire them to support a cause greater than any one organization and raise more money than all of the organizations could raise independently.

Of course, there would be some natural barriers to success.  Organizations would need to take more risk than they would normally find acceptable and new governance structures would need to be created.  But where there's a will...

If anyone is interested in this idea, let's explore further.  I would be happy to create a wiki to get the discussion started.

Tagged: fundraising new event mass collaboration Wikinomics
 

Enterprise Portal Session for DigitalNow

I am doing a session on Enterprise Portals for Associations at DigitalNow in April.  If you are planning to attend and would be willing to participate on a panel to discuss your goals, challenges and lessions learned, please contact me.  I would like to include an association that has done a MOSS implementation and one additional portal infrastructure (BEA Weblogic Portal or Plumtree; IBM WebSphere; Oracle; etc.)

BTW, if you have not yet registered, you should know that it is nearly sold out again this year.

Tagged:  Enterprise Portal DigitalNow

Association Tech Conference Keynote

This keynote will be covered better elsewhere so I will not try to duplicate.  But I would like to comment on the presentation by Anthony Williams, author of Wikinomics.

This was a dynamic presentation that challenged associations to adapt quickly to meet the changing needs of their members, especially the N-Generation.  BTW, India and China have 10 times the number of N-Geners than all of North America who are starting to enter the workforce.

Williams made a convincing argument that this new generation works and thinks very differently than older generations.  They network differently, shop differently, communicate differently, etc.

The audience was faced with two ways to respond to this challenge.  It would be easy to throw up one's hands, be overwhelmed, not know where to start, or go into complete denial.  The second option is to take action and develop a strategy to change their business models to meet these changing needs.  I hope that most take the latter path.

Tagged:  ASAE Association Technology Conference Anthony Williams Wikinomics N-Gen

Tech Conference Town Hall

Since we agreed that comment made in the room would stay there, I will not report on what folks had to say but here are a few interesting findings from the electronic polling that took place in the room...

• 81% of participants were association professionals (others did not participate on many questions)
• Only 23% of association have a CIO or CTO (61% of those with 100+ staff)
• 68% reported having no formal technology plan (really ?!)
• Top 3 priorities:  Website improvements; AMS upgrade; social networking
• 81% reported technology budgets trending up over past 3 years
• 13% have deployed wikis; 35% have no interest (scary)
• 26% have deployed blogs; 34% have no interest (scarier)

Tagged: ASAE Association Technology Conference Town Hall polling

Association Technology Conference Underway

ASAE and the Center's Technology Conference kicks off this afternoon with a Town Hall meeting pre-session to gauge the pulse of associations on technology issues.  Participants will have voting machines to indicate their perspectives on current issues such as social media, security, governance, applications and tools, etc.  It should be interesting and I will share some of the findings here.

Tagged:  Association Technology Conference ASAE 

Segmentation at the Magazine Stand

Alan Evans makes a clever (I think) observation about audience segmentation in this recent post.

Tagged: audience segmentation Alan Evans magazine stand Clever Think

Knowledge Management in the Web 2.0 Age

Just back from a week in Lake Tahoe for some incredible skiing (over 11 feet of new snow at Heavenly during our stay).  I added a Photo Album on the right with a few pictures.

Meanwhile, check out my article on Knowledge Management in the Web 2.0 Age in the latest issue of Associations Now (page 57).  I talk about how traditional KM and social media are converging into powerful eKnowledge solutions and use the American Institute of Architects' soloso.org site as a case study.  And don't miss The Fine Print sidebar that explains the technology behind Soloso.

As mentioned previously, Mark Carpenter, General Manager, eKnowledge, for AIA and I will be doing a session at the Association Technology Conference on January 31st in DC.  Read the article and then come with your thoughtful questions and suggestions.  I would love to hear from others who are pursuing eKnowledge initiatives.

Tagged: eKnowledge knowledge management social media Soloso Association Technology Conference Associations Now Mark Carpenter  

Technology Conferences for Associations

Here is a list of the major technology events coming up this spring for association professionals:

• Association Technology Conference (Jan. 30 - Feb. 1) in DC (ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership)
• Nonprofit Technology Conference (March 19-21) in New Orleans (NTEN)
• DigitalNow (April 23-26) at Walt Disney World in Orlando (Fusion Productions & the Disney Institute)

Tagged: Association Technology Conference Nonprofit Technology Conference DigitalNow
 

Tuturial for Online Communities

In researching a session I am organizing about successful online communities for ASAE and the Center's Annual Meeting next August, I came across this 5-minute tutorial on the Texas Medical Association's site.  It helps their members understand how to use their active communities of practice.  But it is also a great way for other association professionals to gain insight on how to generate successful online communities.

Please contact me if you have active online communities, may be attending the Annual Meeting next August in San Diego, and are interested in participating on this panel.

There is also a good article in Bottom Line Briefing about how the Lupus Foundation is effectively using some 3rd party social networking tools to generate consumer communities on a tight budget.  Wick Davis using to work for me at the American Diabetes Association and is taking the Lupus Foundation to new levels with their web presence.

Tagged: Texas Medical Society online communities Lupus Foundation Wick Davis